Keeping Up With The Chaldeans - Lily Alattar [0:00-5:02]

Hey everyone, welcome back to Keeping Up With The Caldians. I'm Anthony Toma, your host today. We're here with Lily Allatar, kind of a confusing Caldian last night, but she assures that she's on the same Caldian. So tell us about the beginning, I guess. See, singer, songwriter. Yes. Master's degree holder. Tell us about the beginning. Yes, so I am 24 years old and I'm a Metro Detroit singer. I do most known for a national anthems for the Detroit Red Wings that I've done pistons. I'm a recurrent with the Flint Firebirds, do U of M athletics, and also MLB Spring Training in Arizona. I started singing when I was very young. I had a little princess microphone when I was three years old and Ariel was my favorite princess. So I would always sing her songs part of your world. And I've just been singing and writing songs for kind of as long as I have been able to talk. Okay. What are these songs about that you write? Oh, that's a good question. A lot of times I kind of make scenarios in my head and just write about it. Or whenever I'm sad, it's kind of like a good way to get all my thoughts and feelings out. Just kind of make a potential scenario or write about a scenario that happened to me and I just kind of put it into a song and it's kind of been like a great therapy for me to get my feelings out with like writing. So before you sing the national anthem should we stand up or take our hats off? What should we do? Yes, stand up. Please rise. Take out your hats. At all on a America, right? There you go. Do you want to sing national anthem for us? I am okay. Yeah, okay. I am okay. Maybe next time. We'll get all that. So let's talk about when you were a kid and that part of overcoming some of the things that you talked about earlier. Yes. So when I was about 11, 12 years old, I got diagnosed with anxiety and this was especially apparent when I would read to my classmates. I remember I was in seventh grade in my reading class and we would do reading, go from one seat to the other and usually two turns before mine, I would run to the bathroom and hide for 30 minutes because I was just so embarrassed. My heart would race, I would breathe heavy and I just I couldn't. My voice would shake and then everyone would look at me and be like what's going on with her? Why is she so nervous? And that kind of carried over for a very long time and I thought if I can't even read or speak in front of 20, 30 of my classmates, how am I ever going to sing in front of people? You know what I mean? It requires a lot more breath support and so that was your goal from the very, very young age was to sing in front of people. Exactly. But you realized that that was going to, you thought it was going to hold you back but you overcame it. Yes, exactly. So in high school, it didn't get any better because I also started getting bullied for the way I looked. So it's like on top of, I can't even read in front of my classmates, let alone sing, I'm also getting bullied. So now I care way too much about what people think about me. I wanted to overcome it so my junior and senior year I auditioned for the musical and I didn't get a main role which was just a little shocking to me and then I also didn't get into my after school acapella group my junior year when I auditioned. And you know, it did hurt a lot but I had still this drive in me. I'm like, I know I can one day overcome it and that's kind of how I pushed myself a little bit. But then when I got out of high school and into college, it's like, well this is it for me. You know, there's no choir anymore, there's no any of this. Where the heck do I start? Where do I just go sing? No one's going to take me because I essentially don't really have any experience. Right. So I honestly stopped singing for a couple years. I would still record videos and kind of post them on Instagram but I never really did anything outside of that and I thought that was it and I was never going to sing again. But so there was a time or a process that you implemented on yourself or to yourself or by yourself that helped you overcome it. How what are some of those tools that you learned or used to kind of overcome that? I just had such a passion and such a drive for singing and I had so much encouragement from my family and friends to where I actually contacted a cafe and sent them a couple videos of me singing and they loved it and they brought me in to sing a little bit. Now that was in front of just a couple people, small cafe. I still do it to this day which is amazing. I did... Let's plug the cafe so they did give you that. Yes, that is a bean to go in Lake Orion and Goodbridge. Their coffee is fantastic. I always get their child, a child, a child girl, a child monitor for sure. So yes,